As an intern, HDS encouraged me to make real contributions to the business. My team listened to the feedback I provided for our project, and I saw tangible results from my contributions. By the end of my summer internship, I felt valued by my peers and those in management positions.

The HDS Intern program is also well managed. Almost every week there is some sort of event or speaker for the interns to learn from.

The people are, for the most part, very helpful and friendly. There is a team feeling, regardless of the fact that it's a large company. There's an onsite gym, onsite cafe with slightly subsidized meals, building and facilities are pretty nice.

Cons

The company is stuck in it's ways and it's very difficult to change any existing processes. The base salaries are pretty low and they rarely promote or give raises. However, the annual bonuses can be pretty good. The systems are also very out of date and prevent employees from working efficiently.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

recognize employees for time they've put in at the company and performance. Otherwise you'll lose good employees to competitors that will pay upwards of 50% more.

Salaries for positions in the company are competitive in reference to the rest of the industry. They do have a cafeteria on campus that is reasonable in cost for breakfast and lunch.

Cons

Don't expect annual pay raises. The last time there were pay raises was 2011. To keep the employees from leaving they have a bonus program where they keep 50% of your bonus for the entire year before giving it to you. If you leave before May 15th, you lose it.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Freezing salaries is telling your employees they are not worth keeping.Freezing salaries is telling your employees they are not worth keeping. So don’t be surprised to see your valued employees leaving for greener pastures for more money. With your experts leaving, hiring new people will be more expensive and the costs for training will make it worse. Maybe Management needs to look in the mirror and possibly see the bad mistakes and decisions they are making. And it’s not a matter of lack of money when you see management hiring new people like crazy. And spending astronomical amounts of money sending multiple people all of over the world for this or that meeting. What ever happened to video conferencing? Sorry to say, but Management is out of touch with reality. A company’s best assets are its happy employees.

I have been working at Hitachi Data Systems full-time (more than a year)

Pros

People are willing to help and go the extra mile in order to get projects done.

Cons

Systems (CRM, travel portal, internal site, websites) in place are old thus making operations more complex affecting productivity

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Overhaul the website to represent the true HDS brand especially where the company is heading. Invest in CRM tools and a modern web platform that support digital and social media. Modernize the expense and travel systems in order to improve productivity.

Great Benefits and work Culture for employees. Numerous social events with Opportunity to mingle with colleagues Great Japanese influence.

Cons

I don't know about whole HDS but here is my experience of working as a consultant in Oracle Adapters, Solutions Engineering (SIE) Organization. The Oracle/SAP Adapters Organization is led by some wrong person. Due to his technical inabilities and in-competencies in Oracle/SAP, there is a lot of politics and favoritism in the team. Here is my personal experience, I was there in the company/group for hardly 4 months and had to leave as I got mentally harassed the limit. When I left, I gave standard 2 weeks/10 days of notice. On the 8th day, they scheduled product based training for me to host to Support folks who were supporting the product/project I had developed. As soon as the training was imparted @sharp 5:00 PM, I was asked to let go even though I still had 2 days left for the notice period. Essentially, they were just waiting for me to impart the training. HDS is a great company but because of few people's behavior the rating of the whole company goes down. Sorry for my low rating to HDS.

Advice to ManagementAdvice

Advice to existing employees/consultants:- Do not give standard 2 weeks notice, else your fate would be like mine.

Advice to new-comers as consultants:- Do thorough investigation and research before joining this company/organization. If joining Oracle Adapters/SIE, Be prepared to be exploited. Don't believe in false promises like Contract to Hire.